“The more you try to force it, I learned, the less likely you are to succeed. True missions, it turns out, require two things. First you need career capital, which requires patience. Second, you need to be ceaselessly scanning your always-changing view of the adjacent possible in your field, looking for the next big idea. This requires a dedication to brainstorming and exposure to new ideas. Combined, these two commitments describe a lifestyle, not a series of steps that automatically spit out a mission when completed.”
Cal Newport, So Good They Can’t Ignore You
Archives
“Compelling careers often have complex origins that reject the simple idea that all you have to do is follow your passion.”
Cal Newport, So Good They Can’t Ignore You
“If your goal is to love what you do, you must first build up ‘career capital’ by mastering rare and valuable skills, and then cash in this capital for the traits that define great work.”
Cal Newport, So Good They Can’t Ignore You
“If you want to love what you do, abandon the passion mindset (‘what can the world offer me?’) and instead adopt the craftsman mindset (‘what can I offer the world?’).”
Cal Newport, So Good They Can’t Ignore You
“Respect for the vulnerability of human beings is a necessary part of telling the truth, because no truth will be wrested from a callous vision or callous handling.”
Anaïs Nin, via Sunbeams (Page 94)
“Looking at the beautiful expanse of the sky is an antidote to the nagging pettiness of earthly concerns. And it is good and sobering to lose yourself in that as often as you can.”
Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic (Page 131)
“Gandhi said your power becomes invincible when you have reduced yourself to zero—which means, when you don’t want anything, when you have no more fear looking in the eyes of death, when you’re right here. Then your statement has the power of the universe behind it. It’s coming from a root place of truth, because there’s nothing in it for you. You don’t want anything. To me, that is the power of a Christ, or just one clear person who isn’t vulnerable. I don’t underestimate the power of the human heart. When I look at the human heart, that link, that doorway, I see an institution that makes the Pentagon look like a kids’ toys.”
Ram Dass, via Sunbeams (Page 93)
“If I am transparent enough to myself, then I can become less afraid of those hidden selves that my transparency may reveal to others. If I reveal myself without worrying about how others will respond, then some will care, though others may not. But who can love me, if no one knows me? I must risk it, or live alone. It is enough that I must die alone. I am determined to let down, whatever the risks, if it means that I may have whatever is there for me.”
Sheldon Kopp, If You Meet The Buddha On The Road, Kill Him, via Sunbeams (Page 93)
“Though no two centuries are very much like each other, some hours perhaps are; moments are; critical moments nearly always are. Emotions are the same. We are the same. The man, not the day, is the lasting phenomenon.”
Eudora Welty, via Sunbeams (Page 93)
“What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.”
Crowfoot, via Sunbeams (Page 93)
“We are the living links in a life force that moves and plays through and around us, binding the deepest soils with the farthest stars.”
Alan Chadwick, via Sunbeams (Page 93)
“The purpose of discipline is to promote freedom. But freedom leads to infinity and infinity is terrifying.”
Henry Miller, via Sunbeams (Page 93)
“A wise man is never less alone than when he is alone.”
Jonathan Swift, via Sunbeams (Page 93)
“Art is the lie that reveals the truth.”
Pablo Picasso, via Sunbeams (Page 93)
“Remember: taking the money, wanting the money—proverbially or literally—makes you a servant to the people who have it. Indifference to it, turns the highest power into no power, at least as far as your life is concerned.”
Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic (Page 130)
“Don’t obsess over discovering your true calling. Instead, master rare and valuable skills. Once you build up the career capitol that these skills generate, invest it wisely. Use it to acquire control over what you do and how you do it, and identify and act on a life-changing mission. This philosophy is less sexy than the fantasy of dropping everything to go live among the monks in the mountains, but it’s also a philosophy that has been shown time and again to actually work.”
Cal Newport, So Good They Can’t Ignore You (Page 230)
“Working right trumps finding the right work. He didn’t need to have a perfect job to find occupational happiness—he needed instead a better approach to the work already available to him.”
Cal Newport, So Good They Can’t Ignore You (Page 228)
“Rather than believing they [successful innovators] have to start with a big idea or plan out a whole project in advance, they make a methodical series of little bets about what might be a good direction, learning critical information from lots of little failures and from small but significant wins. This rapid and frequent feedback allows them to find unexpected avenues and arrive at extraordinary outcomes.”
Peter Sims, Little Bets, via So Good They Can’t Ignore You (Page 178)
“Live your questions now, and perhaps even without knowing it, you will live along some distant day into your answers.”
Rainer Maria Rilke, via Sunbeams (Page 92)
“Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.”
Harper Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird, via Sunbeams (Page 91)